– Sharing the column goes a long way to keeping me sane. You’re doing a great deed by clicking twice, briefly.

– If you’re in Austin, TX, this weekend, be sure to check out INSPIRE PRO WRESTLING CLASH AT THE BASH. It is the show with the best (and goofiest) name. I’m the ring announcer and a creative type backstage, so if you want a mark photo with American Eagle I can probably make that happen.

Actually, in your HIPPA release form you can specify that other people can have access to the information and disclose it as they see fit. It’s different for corporate employees when their physical health is their job, same kind of thing that allows a sports team to disclose an injury. The blanket statements on the release are: , I authorize disclosure of information regarding my condition and treatment to the following agents, followed by the more important; I understand that information used or disclosed pursuant to this authorization may be disclosed by the recipient and may no longer be protected by federal or state law.

So we now have got what Brandon wanted all along. Enjoy Cena as the champ and your ‘so-called’ Favorite wrestler coming back as a shell of himself and he will go into a feud with Kane. BUT it’s all good to Brandon cause it makes sense!

Now that Punk’s gone, Ambrose is probably the best talker in the company, at least among wrestlers. The one problem I had with his promo, though, is the old Roddy Piper axiom about not saying anything you can’t actually do. Ambrose won’t literally move Rollins’ nose to the side of his head, rip off his scalp, and stuff it into his toothless mouth, so saying it just diminishes his credibility.

You try and tell me for one second that you don’t believe he’s a demented enough bastard to at the very least try his damndest to do it? Sure, in the end, he won’t be successful at delivering all off those injuries. But I believe Dean WAY more than Piper that he potentially could do those things if given the opportunity.

Sandust would actually be a pretty awesome way of starting the Sandow/Rhodes/Goldust beef we never got. Either way, I would welcome Damien Sandow dressing up and acting like 90s androgynous, inappropriate Goldust.

This so much. WWE’s got so many problems with their Divas division and my biggest one now is no reputable heel challengers. Turn Nikki or Cameron or even Naomi, someone else please. I’m cool with Alicia getting title shots, just give her and Paige someone else to fight in the meantime.

What I don’t get is, is Cody Rhodes still getting paid in this situation? So what, he says Goldust needs a better partner and ever since he just gets paid by the company he’s contracted to just stand, besuited, side by side with a TV? We all throw shade at Randy Orton for his lack of leg covering but at least he comes to work, well, ready to work, you know?

It’d be interesting, at least for the nerd in me, to have some kayfabe explanation for how wrestlers get paid. I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe standard is. Are they under a contract where they get paid based on showing up? Wins and losses? “Big money” matches? Merchandise sales?

I think Brandon’s written before about how Dusty used to make the matches seem more important in WCW by talking about winner’s of matches getting paid more.

“Now imagine that in the middle of your Game of Thrones episode it’s revealed that the only person who can save Castle Black is SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS, and Spongebob not only saves the day, he stands around giving big thumbs up gestures at all your favorite characters and going WAHHHHH.”

I mean, Jon Snow is basically Game of Thrones SpongeBob Squarepants, so yeah, that happened.

I really like the face Swagger idea. Zeb would be perfect to make the crowd shout “we the people” to Lana’s face. Maybe he could do that repeatedly over and over again with different endings what “the people will do”. It would be a great match-up with tons of possibilities.

I haven’t even started reading yet, I just wanted to get in that notice how sly they think they were with the whole Cena being the third man. when they showed the graphics for the “six-man” it was a shadow figure behind Ambrose and Roman (of course anybody with a brain knew that if it was against the Wyatts (sic) that it would be Cena) then after the “Cena save” and the match being made “official” during the commercial, the graphic was then Cena in front of Dean and Roman, like he was the new leader…I’m a Cena fan (ducking) but even I found the irony there to be too much. I kept waiting (when the match was over) for John to get the Double beat down just for old time’s sake.

What I’m hoping for, and I don’t really have enough faith in WWE’s writing staff, is that this whole thing with him joining Evolution is just a planned action by the Shield. Something they put together so they could dismantle Evolution from the inside. The announce team was really all over the whole, “Rollins is the Architect!” during the show, and they’re not really known for any measure of subtlety. This is also the only thing that will allow me to even slightly accept that after months of pounding on Cena that they would even attempt to work with him now.

Poor Ziggler. He’s all on Smackdown trying to get some good samaritan vengeance on Seth Rollins and getting beat (probably on tonight’s Main Event too) and it’ll turn out with Seth saying “Thank god you suck or my plan could have gone all awry”.

Except that story doesn’t make any sense. Big Dave quit before Seth turned. On what planet would the SHIELD need to execute a plan to destroy Evolution from within when, in fact, Evolution was destroyed earlier that night from within. They had total victory and made Big Dave quit. If it was all part of a plan, that would piss me off more than the turn.

I don’t know how enjoyable that would be but I can’t say I agree with therick711 here. I think it could be a semantic issue here. It would be more likely that Seth would be trying to destroy the Authority from within than Evolution.

Still, someone had to turn. Rollins was the most stale character in the group. And if you need to fight the Wyatts, I’d rather it be a 6 man tag. And as stale as I find the Cena character, it actually makes the most sense from all of the characters points of view. Consider:

1. The Wyatts are the most dangerous six man team remaining, so it makes sense that the Authority would try to use them to destroy the Shield.

2. Cena has the most negative history with the Wyatts, so it makes sense that he would want to fight them on even terms.

3. The Shield are known for using “the Numbers Game” to their advantage, so it would make sense that they would want the numbers in their favour or even, no matter who it meant teaming with for the night.

All the Cena hate notwithstanding, this was a logical progression for the storyline to take. It doesn’t mean Cena’s part of the Shield. It doesn’t mean that there’s been any major character change to any of the major players. It was just everybody acting exactly like we’d expect them to act. It’s the logic that everyone is always clamoring for.

The Kobald and Push Cena signs were great, but my favorite of the night was the MAGGLE sign. Nothing else, just MAGGLE. Also, was it just me or did that look nothing like milk that Summer poured on Layla? Maybe milk mixed with flour? Or really thin paint? There was a bunch left on the table after it got tipped over in a very non-milk-like manner.

I chose E3 over Raw last night, thankfully. Next week, I will find something else to distract me instead of Kevin Hart’s Raw. I saw him already making jokes on Twitter…nope. Someone post that 30 minute supercut of Dean’s Nope for me?

I was actually thinking about it last night and planned on bringing it up in here today, but you touched on it too:

Lana vs. Zeb in political debates would be the most entertaining thing WWE’s done since Team Hell No. Between the names he’d call her, and the exaggerated outraged faces she would make in response, it NEEDS TO HAPPEN

I really, really, REALLY wish they had have left Cena the fuck out of The Shield situation. They would have made Reigns and Ambrose look even more badass than they already are if they just went full-on rage vengeance batshit on Evolution / The Authority just the two of them vs. whoever.

Isn’t it amazing that we have to point out the times that WWE characters maintain continuity?

I feel like, with the constant rotating of writers, WWE should hire one guy who’s only job is to keep track of all the evil things people in WWE have done to each other. Like it’s one thing for a face/heel turn to lead to unconventional tag teams, but when a feud gets really personal and the guys try to murder each other, they probably shouldn’t team up ever again without acknowledging that they hate each other first.

The WWE definitely needs somebody to focus on continuity. And it would / could probably do fucking wonders for driving subscribers to the network if they actually referenced old storylines and old PPVs in the process. Like, if two guys who had a blood feud five years ago and are forced to become allies of convenience they could easily cut a promo where they go “Yeah, I know we hated each other back in 2009 and our match at PPV X was fucking epic. And even though I still hate you for (insert boss bump / spot done during the match) I’m okay with teaming up together now so we can destroy these other fuckers over here.”

Curious: When was the last time an interesting storyline was written about the John Cena character? I’m not talking about what they do now, where they take something else more interesting and they insert him into it (Bryan, Wyatt Family, Shield) but rather Cena himself has a story that is purely his own?

Cena is the most important thing to everyone. To Cena, to creative, to the writers, to the largest portion of the audience. When something more important or noteworthy happens, Cena has to be placed in it, because it can’t be the most important thing if it doesn’t contain the most important thing. So the answer is the last story that just had Cena in it was probably his feud with Ryback.

Now Cena has to stand up for everyone, be the reason why everything happens, and resolve every important conflict across the roster.

The way I understand it is that Cena can’t change without effecting merchandising money. But Cena becomes interesting to me when he’s faced with the right antagonist or probably, more aptly become the antagonist. The fact that his character is so easily identifiable with “What the WWE wants its champion to be” made him a tremendous foil for Van Dam, Punk and Bryan.

1) Lets look at the bright side, Vacant is now a two time champion this year! #domination.

2) I still don’t get Rollins’ reason to leave. The Shield were so dominant he decided to adapt to Evolution, a team that hasn’t won in a long time? Huh? Should have mentioned money and opportunity or something.

3) I like the Alicia Fox/Paige matchup, but, what the hell is the point of them fighting now? Paige has been the clear winner the entire time. Get her to move on. Speaking of the Divas, lets get some Emma and Summer Rae wrestling again.

4) John Cena winning the title again doesn’t bother me as much as having to see him, Orton, Sheamus and Del Rio all in the same ring at MITB.

5) So happy to see the masses noticing Sandow now. Here’s hoping this is all leading to a slow push.

The main reason Goldy keeps wrestling RybAxel is because they are the team that “broke them up” so they are the barometer…they’re the team Goldy has to beat with someone else to prove the point. I’d love to see Heath and Drew win a match, but they just got done being beaten by a little bull, at least the team that beat them and made this happen serves as somewhat of “the line” on that measuring stick.
Right on board with the “you get 1 opponent lol this is all we know how to write” but in this sense, at least to me it seems to make sense unless they draw it out another 2 months like when they were trying to plant the seeds for this.

There are several little things that they seem to be unable to do (mostly those things involve mobile use). But, any website that tries to fix something that isn’t broken is going to encounter problems like that.

It’s part of the “cheer for the heels” opinion that Brandon often and I’ll admit I don’t always agree with where he’s coming from.

The Authority injured Bryan through a sneak attack performed by a 7 foot monster who appears to be “taking orders from” or “following the objectives of the” Authority. They succeeded. They then attempted to force him to give up the belt in a humiliating fashion possible before eventually stripping him of it. Just because evil characters have tried to do it before and failed doesn’t make the way they’re going about this any less slimy. Just because Ric Flair used to poke people in the eyes doesn’t make it any less “your fault” if you blind someone while doing it.

However, this is one time where I’m not sure whether Brandon’s talking about the characters or the people. It’s tremendous booking. Bryan can’t wrestle, so they’re using it as an opportunity to have the Authority act like completely irredeemable assholes. However, the characters are assholes that are using their position of power to abuse a guy they don’t like. I don’t see any way around that no matter how entertaining Brandon is when he’s trying to explain it.

I will give Brandon credit for focusing on the booking and story line value here rather than on what a misunderstood and “totally correct” boss Stephanie is. I’ll admit to enjoying that change.

Its time to offer Vince a Faustian pact. 20 minutes of every RAW will be Cena and Mike the Miz telling jokes, and we all agree to watch it, feign laughter, and not slam it online. In exchange, those 2 are not allowed to wrestle or interact with any of the other wrestlers in any form or fashion. Deal?

I agree and think it’s awesome. Wrestling has a long history of using lines and mannerisms from popular culture to get heat. Ambrose shares some similarities to the Joker. Cena shares some characteristics with other old timey heroes. The Million Dollar Man and Vince McMahon were caricatures of rich people people that had been done in other media.

The question I have is “Is it entertaining?” With Ambrose on the mic, the answer is a definitive yes.

First of all, I think it’s not unreasonable that Cena is the one who voulenteers to tag with the Shield, when he a) is Awful Good by alignment and b) still have a beef with Wyatt since Wyatt is no-selling his loss with the “I’m reborn! You just beat my last host-body, Hah-hah!”.

And it works because the Shield aren’t stupid, Cena is not the worst back up to have in a tag-match, even when they deliberatly try to win without having to use him.

I think Rollins made a valid point, that he (in his mind) constructed the Shield, and thus is free to dismantle it when that improves his own chances for a championship reign. (Add to that the fact that one of his former associates is a an axe-crazy psycho, while the other have delutions of grandeurs and tend to steal the spotlight when he goes nuclear.)

Ad Rybaxle: I see no reason why they shouldn’t go along with facing Goldust & Throwaway partner each week, as they seem to have good control and keep winning. I suspect Cody is asking for the macth up, so he can keep the variable of opposition constant in his experiment to find Goldust the perfect tag-team partner.

Summer Rae sees Layla as a homewrecker who stole her beau when she wasn’t looking. Even if she’s overreacting it’s not exactly uncommon in the real world to take revenge in such a situation, even when you’re not in the right morally/legally.

Paige and Alicia have pretty good chemistry, and I think Alicia works best solo, rather than having Aksana as a tag-along. Unless you want a face vs. face match-up, she’s by far the best choice as Paiges feud.

The Shield with Cena reminds me of that time when The Road Warriors tagged with a face painted Dusty Rhodes. As a kid I loved it but a few months ago I rewatched the match and I kept wondering what the hell were they thinking?

That Randy Orton picture was indeed funny but it totally fucked up my daughter’s birthday. We’ve had tickets/her Orton mask for months and spent all day making an RKO sign that never got used. She was super, super pissed.

Also, I don’t know if they caught this on TV at all but when Sandow rolled out of the ring after eating the pin he KEPT ROLLING AROUND THE OUTSIDE LIKE AN INTERPRETIVE DANCER even though everyone’s attention was on the Tron for the replay. That dude can turn shit to gold.